Agenda item

Councillor R Musgrave stepped down from the Committee and left the room at this point in order to be able to return and speak as applicant.

Application: 2021/0871/OUT

Location: Field House, School Lane, Bolton Percy

Proposal: Outline application (with all matters reserved) for the erection of detached dormer bungalow with double garage and associated driveway

The Principal Planning Officer presented the application which had been brought before Planning Committee as one of the Applicants (Mr R Musgrave) was a Ward Councillor for Selby District Council and the Councils scheme of delegation required that the application be determined by the Planning Committee. 

Members noted that it was an outline application (with all matters reserved) for the erection of detached dormer bungalow with double garage and associated driveway and asked that in the future maps of development limits of applications be provided in hard copy at the meeting.

The Committee considered the Officer Update Note which set out additional information from Yorkshire Water, an amendment to Condition 2 and further responses from the Parish Council, Sam Smiths Brewery and third-party comments from an objector. The Officer’s responses to the matters raised were also set out in the Update Noted.

The Committee asked numerous questions of the Officer relating to two previous approvals for properties at the site built outside of development limits, the current application’s encroachment into the countryside and greenfield garden land, clarification as to the self-build nature of the scheme, sustainability, connections to past or future planning policies.

Officers confirmed that the site was outside of settlement and development limits, encroached into the open countryside and was on greenfield garden land. The scheme had not been formally registered as self-build and there were no existing, emerging or out of date policies that could be applied to the scheme.

David Tillotson, objector, had his representation against the application read out by Democratic Services.

Councillor Richard Musgrave, applicant, spoke in favour of the application.

Members debated the application further, with some emphasising that the application needed to be assessed by existing policies and the by the fact that the Council now had a five-year land supply. The Core Strategy permitted countryside development but only in the event of affordable housing, which the current scheme did not contain. Development in secondary villages was restricted to certain types such as rebuilding or conversion, or the filling of frontage/ However, if such schemes were to be on greenfield sites, they did not meet policy requirements. The application in question did not improve the rural economy and was not being built for business, and similar applications had been refused recently. There was nothing special about the material considerations of the scheme that had been presented to the Committee and would, if approved, be a breach of planning policy and the statutory development plan.

Some Members felt that the application should be approved, but others expressed further concern about the effect on flooding and the opinions of the Parish Council and therefore continued to voice their opposition.

It was proposed that the application be APPROVED; the proposal was not seconded and fell.

It was proposed and seconded that the application be REFUSED for the reasons set out in the debate; a vote was taken and was carried.

RESOLVED:

That the application be REFUSED for the following reasons:

a)    that the scheme would be outside Development Limits of Secondary Village Bolton Percy in countryside;

b)   that the material planning considerations presented as part of the scheme were not significant enough to permit approval; and

c)    that the application was considered to be contrary to the Selby District Core Strategy.